User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: At the Hair Salon

This was a good video for me with my elementary/intermediate understanding of mandarin to perform this experiment on (this is just one data point, more data should be collected by other cpodders doing the same thing to draw a conclusion). I wanted to know what I would learn just by watching the video. I wrote the pinyin in MSFT Word, and listed next to the pinyin what I thought the pinyin was referring to.  This is what I got:

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Toufa – hair

Lifasshi – shampoo or wash hair

Xi3 – wash?

Shui3 - wash

Chong – rinse

Xifashui - rinse

Chui – dry

I see from the listed vocabulary for the lesson that i was wrong about half the time.   And I did have to go to the vocabulary to get the right answer. 

My point is that i'm not sure that video is an EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT way to teach.  It wasn't clear that what was being pointed to was the action being conducted, or the person doing the action, or some other background thing being pointed to. I guess i'm giving a bit of evidence that implies that I agree with what shiqiangdan said about it being hard to determine what is being pointed to in the video

I noticed that most of the comments here are about how cool the video is (I agree), but not about how quickly and accurately the video taught them new terms.  Or about how well they retained the information once they learned it. I understand people are enthused about this as a tool, but it would be interesting to hear quantitative evidence that they are learning efficiently this way, or at least more efficiently this way.  

Oh, and if you've read this far, i'm acknowledging that everyone is different, and that we all learn in different ways. 

For CPod: I'm curious to know if you have data that suggests video is an effective, efficient way to learn (other than being fun), and if so, what the challenges are to making video an effective teaching tool? I know these videos have to be relatively expensive to produce. It might be worth putting resources into other teaching areas, or better yet, improving what's already on the site before going into video.

Posted on: Dress Warmly

Hi Amber, thanks for this.  So

chuan1 ni3 de mao2yi1 is "put on your sweater"?

Also, is "tuo1xia2" to take off clothes??

thanks.

Posted on: Dress Warmly

FWIW, I really appreciate cpod's overall value, and the fact that cpod's staff has a tremendous amount of work to do in keeping tens of thousands of uptight, demanding, impatient customers satisfied.  It's a pretty thankless job, other than these customers say "thank you" by paying for your content.  my back of the envelope calculation/estimate of value was:

• Pimsleur: 45 hours of audio mandarin- 500-900 words
• Living Language: 20 hours of audio mandarin - 500-1300 words
• ChinesePod: 333 hours of audio mandarin (and counting) - 1000-2000 words

CPod and its staff definitely have value worth paying for!

Posted on: Dress Warmly

gee, this is the kind of lesson that I was looking for regarding dealing with small kids, and getting them to put on clothes for various reasons.  It took a lot of searching the site to find it.  So duo1 chuan1 is to put on clothes? individual clothing items will work also with duo1 chuan1?  How about if i want to tell my 3 year old to take something off, like that sweater that's too small for her? Thanks.

Posted on: Traffic

Cool video? definitely! effective video for teaching language vocabulary, given the cost to make the video?  Unclear. I look forward to seeing more on the topics macallus88, weibwo, wolson,

and others highlighted as video topics. 

Did ChinesePod create video because paying customers demanded it, or because they thought it would be a cool teaching tool?  I guess my question is really on the priorities behind new functionality released to the community.  Video is great, but i've seen suggestions by others on these posts that i would prioritize before video, cool as video is.  I don't know anywhere on the site where we paying customers are asked what new functionality we want next, or what existing functionality we want improved next.

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

@roscovanbasten,

thanks for the reply. I was thinking that giving suggestions visibility under the "community" tab that shows up when we first log-in would be a good place to put suggestions.  I was thinking that adding a "suggestions" tab, along with the existing "conversations", "groups", and "Rankings" tab might be a good place to start.  then under "suggestions", there could be "lesson topics", "improvements to the site", and "other".  For each of these, there should be a status of something if the suggestion is actually taken.  So if someone suggests a lesson topic of "juicy, scandal-ridden American politics" (btw, i'm an American), we can see in the status that that topic was suggested months ago, and was deemed too racy for sensitive CPodders.  Or that it was accepted as an advanced lesson for delivery 6 months from now on the site.  Hope that helps. 

Also, for those that only periodically check that "suggestions" tab, I think it would be helpful for cpod to be able to link back to a suggestion if one has been made in the comments of a lesson, like this one.  so you could have said, "flyboeing777, thanks for the suggestion. here's the latest on that topic", and then have a link going back to the suggestion page. 

I realize that's creating more work for cpod, but once the discipline has been established into the user community to go to the suggestions portion of the site, then maybe cpod wouldn't have to link back to the suggestions from the comments.

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

The video lesson looks nice enough.

Now that CPod has the time to dedicate to ensuring the existing content works, and providing new content for paying customers, It would be nice if CPod could provide feedback on the suggestions we make, or at least have a systematic way to address the suggestions we make.  If nothing else, we could get away from subscribers making the same suggestion over and over again, when the original answer was, "we did that and only one person liked it", or "nice idea in theory, but would take too long to implement". 

Posted on: Pretty Clothes

Hi Ken,

We parents of small kids could use more lessons for speaking with our 4 year olds in mandarin.  This dialog is especially difficult to come by, as most sites still just teach business or travel related terms. CPod has plenty of decent content on dealings with offspring, but i'm looking for a elementary or intermediate lesson like:

Dad: Mike, time to wake up.  You can't oversleep like yesterday. 

Mike: Ok

Dad: i mean now! please get up and put on your clothes.  Your sisters are already having breakfast.

Mike: ok.  can I wear my new Air Jordan shoes?

Dad: I thought you said you weren't playing basketball today.  You can only wear them for basketball.

Mike: but Dad, all the kids are wearing Jordans even if they don't play basketball!

Dad: please just put on your clothes and get into the kitchen and eat!

Thanks.

Posted on: On Location at the Beijing 2008 Olympics

I agree with dpay02 regarding hearing the occasional native speaker on the street in cpod.  The lessons are great for anchoring our intuition and teaching us the basics of grammar and vocabulary, but then you go to Beijing  or Shenzhen, and native speakers speak 800 mph, and they have an accent, and you say "shenma?" all the time for the first 6 months you're in China.  It would really be great for to bring in a native speaker series of lessons somehow, where we newbies/ellies/intermediates and so on could listen in on what a native speaker is saying at normal speed.  Plus it would be another way to get us used to native speakers. 

And I know Jenny, Connie et al are native speakers, but they are not taxi drivers with local accents, local expressions. What makes cpod different from rosetta stone, berlitz and other language teachers is the ability to take the language instruction in directions those organizations can't/won't. adding native speakers is one way to stay ahead of competition.

Posted on: Olympic Excitement

calkins' link works here in the greater Boston area as well. cool to see the Olympics with what is probably a 5 minute delay, instead of tonight with all the pre-ceremony hype.